Category Archives: WTF-ery

I will be relaunching this blog very soon. Stay tuned for updates. The theme will still contain a lot of different things I find interesting, however there will be a decidedly more political twist. In other words – I will persist and resist.

We’ve all seen the infamous “Faces of Meth,” chronicling the rapid and horrific decline of meth users from more-or-less normal looking people to walking corpses. Something worse has hit the streets of the US.

Krok house and users

The homemade drug called Krokodil was previously seen in Russia. It is a disfiguring and lethal mix of codeine and hydrocarbons like oil, paint thinner, alcohol or gasoline. Iodine and red phosphorous are other primary ingredients. Some cooks add hydrochloric acid to the mix.

It is easy to cook in a home kitchen and takes about 30 minutes to make. Users inject this poison into their veins, and the caustic ingredients cause severe tissue damage. The first two cases in the US were reported in Arizona.

Krokodil user cooking up and preparing to inject

Krokodil, or desomorphine, causes damage to blood vessels and tissue at the injection site. This causes gangrene and the flesh and bone literally rots form the inside out. Some of the sores resemble crocodile skin, thus the street name. In Russia, krokodil users live two to three years.

The drug produces a heroin-like high at a bargain price. The high lasts only about 90 minutes, compared to hours-long heroin nods. The drug was first seen in Russian in 2002, but was originally patented in the US in the 1930s.

It became popular in Russia due to the difficulty and cost of obtaining heroin. The cost is three to nine times less for krokodil. Time Magazine called the narcotic “the most horrible drug in the world.”

Krokodil user – gangrenous legs

Amputations are common, and krokodil dissolves jawbones and teeth. Blood poisoning, meningitis and burst arteries occur, and other users simply rot from the inside out. Most users who continue to use die.

The United States Drug Enforcement Administration has monitored desomorphine since 2011, but does not yet regulate it. They are waiting on samples from the Arizona to confirm the presence of the drug. The DEA says two reported cases are insufficient to justify regulation. The FDA spokesperson commented, “People are mixing codeine and gasoline, and shooting it into their veins. What do they expect?”

De-sheathed leg of Krokodil user

Permanent effects of the drug, besides skin and bone rotting, including speech impediments, brain damage and erratic movements. The rotting flesh, speech problems and jerky movements have prompted people to nickname krokodil the “Zombie Drug.”

The few people who manage to quit are permanently disfigured. Withdrawal can last over a month, compared to about a week for heroin. If you want to be completely grossed out, here are some of the less graphic photos of users. Click THIS LINK for worse pictures — definitely not worth the price of the high.

Once upon a time, we viewed contact lenses as a great invention. Then we saw them as a necessary innovation, because glasses were so uncool. Glasses became cool again, so contacts had to step up their game to stay in the race. Colored contacts and special effects contacts became common.

Cosmetic Contact Lenses – the creepy ones

Now, those wacky folks at icandycontactlens.com have taken it to another level entirely. Hello Kitty contact lenses, in several different colors, for the low price of $22.95.

What good is an obsession with Hello Kitty if you can’t stick the cat directly on your eyeball. You can get one big Hello Kitty cat face to cover your iris, or contact lenses with a ring of tiny cat faces encircling the pupil.

Giant cat face on eyeball.

We thought the Hello Kitty thing was fading. Alas, no. Is there nothing that can’t be Kitty-sized? If the eyes are the windows of the soul, what does wearing a Hello Kitty head on your eye say about you?

According to the icandycontactlens website, “… the world’s first ANTI RADIATION kitty themed cosmetic lens was designed … Natural sparkling patterns, comfort, clarity, and very high permeability…”

Actual ad for the Hello Kitty contact lenses

Emphasis on ANTI RADIATION is mine. Anti-radiation cats? Anti-radiation contacts? Seriously, WTF? How on Earth have we survived this long without ANTI RADIATION protection for our eyes? No wonder things are weird. Global warming and climate change, weird weather, and now this? I blame our lack of proper eyewear.

Built in 1978 by businessman Jerry Henderson and his wife Mary, the house and 1 bedroom guest house are entirely underground. The entrance is through the above-ground caretaker’s house. Henderson built the place, intending to survive the inevitable end of the world safely underground and away from the nuclear holocaust.

The home features a dance floor, swimming pool (larger than most houses), spa and putting green. It has a faux lawn on all four sides. The place has also been for sale since 2001 with no buyers. The price has dropped from $8 million to $1.7 million, and it’s bank owned.

Faux lawn, putting green, etc. on the underground-outside. Is that Faux outside?

Allegedly the home contains over $1 million in Italian marble on the fireplace and around the pool. The great room is truly great – 40×46 feet, containing a dance floor and a stage. The interior of the house looks very Liberace-esque, with indoor fountains and waterfalls, and a pink bathroom and kitchen. Lots and lots of pink.

Pink bathroom. So very, very pink

An underground outdoor grill lives inside a large fake rock in the fake yard. It vents through a fake tree. Lavish wallpaper, 360-degree murals, putting green, lighted display cases, and even a toaster built into the kitchen wall are features of this unique property.

Kitchen. I’m hungry already.

Mr. and Mrs. Henderson, it seems, were not only ridiculously rich and devoid of decorating sense, they were also huge proponents of living underground. Henderson’s company sponsored an exhibit at the NY World’s Fair in 1964-65 called “Why Live Underground.” Henderson believed the end of the Cold War would be nuclear inferno rather than the Wall coming down and the haunting sounds of the Scorpions singing “Winds of Change.”

The Scorpions. Singing Winds of Change. Get with the 80s, man!

Originally the building connected via a tunnel to the building next door, which was Henderson’s office. After the Henderson’s died, the properties went to separate owners and the tunnel was filled.

The listing agent, Winston King, points out that the home is priced at only about $100 per square foot. He anticipates someone will purchase it soon, perhaps for an event space or another Las Vegas tourist tour.

Man said he put his penis in his passed-out 29-year old neighbor to save her life. CPR DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY (FARK.com headline)

Salt Lake City Tribune – 6/10/2013

Police: St. George man claims he had sex with unconscious woman to ‘save’ her life

A 50-year-old St. George man is in trouble after he allegedly found a female neighbor unconscious on her front porch and allegedly claimed he had sex with her to try to warm her.

Rodger William Kelly told police he inserted his penis inside the unconscious 29-year-old on May 19 because “he was trying to save her life,” according to court documents.

“He said he did place it inside of her to try and get her temperature up,” police wrote in a probable cause statement filed in 5th District Court.

Police told Kelly that his actions amounted to rape. He was charged Monday with one count of first-degree felony rape. Rodger William Kelly, of St. George, was being held Tuesday at the Purgatory Correctional Facility in Washington County pending $25,000 bond, a jail spokeswoman said.

Rodger William Kelly mugshot

Kelly told officers that he found the woman passed out in front of her apartment and brought her inside his apartment, changed her clothes and put her on his bed. He said he then lay down next to her and hugged her to try to get her temperature up because she had been outside, then attempted intercourse to warm her.

When police arrived, responding to an unconscious person call, they said they found Kelly inside his apartment giving the woman CPR.

“We believe through the investigation and our evidence that his claim is just not correct,” said St. George Police Sgt. Sam Despain.

Welcome to St. George Utah

The woman later told police she thought she might have been raped and recalled being dressed in a pair of the man’s underwear and shorts. She told police she had bruising on her pelvic and upper thighs, according to court documents.

The hospital was unable to complete a rape kit because the woman’s vaginal area was cleaned while she was sedated, according to court documents.

Kelly told police that the two previously were intimate, but admitted the woman had told him before the incident that she didn’t want to have sex with him again.

Officials and engineers are searching an unstable area of land after a sinkhole enveloped a Florida man’s bedroom in the middle of the night, sucking him down into the earth.

The victim, identified by local media as Jeffrey Bush, 36, has not been heard from since he screamed as a 20-foot-deep by 20-foot-wide hole opened underneath his family’s Hillsborough County home late Thursday.

The sinkhole swallowed part of the interior of the house but left the exterior remarkably intact.

Engineers work in front of a home where sinkhole opened up underneath a bedroom and swallowed a man on Friday, March 1 in Seffner, Hillsborough County, Fla.

“They heard a sound they described as a car crash emanating from the bedroom,” Hillsborough County Fire Chief Ron Rogers said at a Friday morning news conference outside the Seffner, Fla., house. “They rushed in. All they could see was part of a mattress sticking out of the hole. Essentially, the floor ofthe room had opened.”

I honestly didn’t know whether to post this under Humor, WTF-ery or where on iamintellectuallypromiscuous.com

Joabble bought a $5 gig for promotion on this site – fair disclosure – and submitted this blog post and photo to me for said promotion. It is definitely worth the read, and certainly an object lesson in why having a local guide or a good grasp of the language might be advisable when traveling. Especially if you are going to get naked and let people touch you in a Turkish bath house. Just sayin’. Check it out!

A Florida man is facing charges of unlicensed practice of health care causing serious bodily harm after he injected silicone into at least two patients’ buttocks at a motel room, according to a Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office arrest report obtained Wednesday.

Calvin Edward Butler, 44, also known as Tamieka Butler, performed the injections at El Patio Motel dating back to June 2012, the report said.

Calvin Edward Butler, butt-surgery Krazy Glue bandit

The first alleged victim, a woman, told detectives in December that she received injections from Butler at the motel four times between September and October, the report said.

The victim said she would disrobe from the waist down and Butler would use a felt tip pen to mark areas on her buttocks where Butler felt she “needed fullness,” according to the report.

The expression “when it rains, it pours” has never been more true for my family I think.

We are in the process of moving my grandmother (aged 100 years, 11 months and 10 days) from an independent retirement apartment to assisted living. She was put in the hospital a couple of weeks ago with congestive heart failure, and has been in skilled nursing rehab for about a week. The task of the move has fallen to myself and my parents, aged 75 and 76. Cleaning out a 100 year old woman’s apartment is no fun. We are talking hoarders here, folks. I took out at least a dozen bags of trash and items to be discarded that *should* have been trash. Then Mom had to cull more stuff and the clothes. Good God, the clothes. Some had not been worn in so long there was dust on them. We packed everything up, and Mom hired an EXCELLENT senior moving company to move the furniture.

In the middle of all this, I am still waiting on my shoulder surgery. It was delayed from 1/17 because I cleverly had a car wreck on the way to the parents to GO to the surgery. Apparently anasthesiologists won’t put you under for at least a week after you’ve been in even a fender bender. Mine happened in congested traffic. Everyone, including me, slammed on their brakes for something. I was the last in line, and didn’t slam fast enough I guess, and slammed into the BMW in front of me. $115 “inattentive driving” ticket and $500 car insurance deductible, and my car should be ready to pick up on Friday.

So, moving Grandma’s stuff in a rental car. That actually proved to be a boon, because the rental has fold-down rear seats and let me carry more stuff than my Civic hybrid. And I suppose having the surgery postponed was also a blessing because I have been able to help the parents with the move rather than being moral support.

Add to this that Daughter is scheduled to have a cardiac ablation procedure to correct Paroxysmal Supraventricular Tachycardia, a condition she was born with but which has been worsening. This is set for Friday and will involve surgeons threading a soldering iron up through her femoral artery to her heart and zapping the offending nerve bundle into submission. Sounds un-fun.

Then, yesterday evening after packing some of Grandma’s stuff I went to the parents’ house to chill for a bit. I found their old dog Ebby in bad shape. She had been failing for a while, but just looked horrible. I put the other dog – younger and far too rowdy- in her crate, and lay on the floor with Eb. Using my empath and Reiki stuff (believe it or don’t) me and Eb talked and she got lots of pets. She was in a lot of pain and basically was communicating it was time for her to journey. I talked to my Dad and asked him to see if the vet could give her something for her pain at least.

He took her to the vet first thing this morning and was told it was indeed Eb’s time to go. Ebby, age 13+, passed to The Summerland before 9:30 this morning. This was very hard on the parents, even though they knew her time was close. None of the rest of us who knew Eb dealt with it very well, either.

The Summerland

I filled the day with moving stuff, supervising the movers at the new apartment, running errands for the new place and generally getting the new apartment ready for Grandma to move in on Thursday. Mom went home after the movers left the old place, to be with Dad and grieve Ebby in private, and I notified the kids and my brother of what had occurred.

My cousin is supposed to be coming to town 1/28 to help finalize the move – including any final furniture that needs to come out of the old place and over to my place. This weekend, my sheriff is coming to town to see his kids before training, and I am hoping he can help me move most of that furniture with his Big Truck.

Meanwhile, after all of the activity the past couple of days, my shoulder that is waiting on surgery has flared up into an angry hot mess, and my back may actually fall off. That would be a good thing, because it hurts like hell being still attached and all. Money is non-existent (so buy stuff off my sponsor page and toss me a nickel already!) and not likely to become more existent in the near future. I get a call from my doctor today that my labs were normal except a serious Vitamin D deficiency. Doesn’t that cause rickets or scurvy or something?

Anyway, requires a prescription and not just regular vitamins. Since Vitamin D is provided by the body in the sun – a situation I habitually avoid either through working nights and evenings, or through being a night owl, AND it is related to diets with protein, I am at risk. Lack of money means cheap eats, which means little protein. Bone pain and muscle weakness are symptoms. Fantastic. I hurt already, who can tell what is vitamins and what is age and decrepitude? Another symptom is cognitive impairment. How can we distinguish that from my usual level of impairment since the head injury? Is it really possible I dropped ANOTHER 50 IQ points? I am going to need diapers, a bib and a full time caretaker at this rate! So, there’s that.

To top things off, Son is stationed in Afghanistan, and everybody over there pulls guard duty on the towers. Now, I know the boy is a great shot gun-wise, and smarter than your average bear, but I can’t help worrying a bit about him sitting in the freezing dark and hoping nothing interesting happens. I don’t want the odd Afghan person lobbing anything metallic or explosive in his general direction and would be perfectly happy if he never has to kill anyone. Although I don’t doubt for a second he will if he must.

I am just waiting for more shoes to drop. So are my parents. So are my daughter and her husband. So are the kids’ other set of parents. Probably my Grandma, too. Somebody asked me how I was holding up. I told her I just freak out for small amounts of time – usually privately – then put my head down and keep trudging forward. The only way out of a bad place is to get through the bad place, and that is kind of where we are right now – trudging through the swamp with the belief that firmer ground and nicer weather are on the other side.

The vampire scare was sparked by reports that an old mill where the vampire allegedly lived has collapsed. According to ABC News, the town’s mayor, Miodrag Vujetic, said: “People are worried, everybody knows the legend of this vampire and the thought that he is now homeless and looking for somewhere else [to live] and possibly other victims is terrifying … ”

Then again, how frightened should you be of a vampire who, as the story goes, can turn into a butterfly? To find out, we spoke with Mark Collins Jenkins, the author of Vampire Forensics, and forensic archeologist and anthropologist Matteo Borrini.